Tag: memoir

This two-day writing retreat in Brighton is a perfect chance to indulge your creative writing craft and get inspiration and feedback from two Sussex authors, Umi Sinha and Colin Grant, who will share their own writing insights and help you progress your writing or projects.

The ‘retreat’ is spread over two days. On Saturday, you’ll be taught by Umi Sinha, who will explore fiction writing and using historical research or real life events in writing, using themes from her debut novel Belonging as starting points. On Sunday, Colin Grant will lead you through using autobiography in your writing including non-fiction and other types of writing, reflecting on his own practice in writing A Memory of Burning.

On Saturday 6 October, we present three authors from African/Caribbean heritage who will read extracts from their books that look at family and life from a post European perspective.

Malawai-born Samson Kambalu, a fine artist and ethnomusicologist whose memoir The Jive Talker: How To Get a British Passport (Jonathan Cape) reflects on his Malawi past.

“An African memoir unlike any other I have read and the reason is this – it is absolutely hilarious and I was crying with laughter… this is a book filled with wonder, humour and hope. It is a magnificent achievement.”

Aminatta Forna, SUNDAY TELEGRAPH about Samson Kambalu

Jamaican-British Colin Grant, Brighton-based historian and BBC radio producer whose memoir Bagseye at the Wheel (Jonathan Cape) focuses on his father and family in Luton circa 1970.

“A tough and tender memoir of growing up in the 70s. It’s a quietly unforgettable book about innocence and experience, about memory and cruelty – and the cruelty of memory.”

The Guardian on Colin Grant’s Bagseye at the Wheel

Debut novelist Ghanian-British Sharon Otoo who lives in Berlin, but previously lived in Brighton will read from her debut novella the things i am thinking while smiling politely (edition assemblage), which was published in Feburary 2012 in German and English.

“Reading this brings flashes of recognition: how it is to be loved and overlooked, to be thought exotic and scorned, to be adored and ignored- all at the same time. Sharon Otoo strings us along, spellbound, with fragments of language that fill us with the thought: this is how the heart breaks.”